ENT and the Earth-Romulan Conflict

[Wingsley]

I have never paid any attention to any ENT novels. I did watch the ENT TV series.

It looked like the show was slowly heading toward playing out the TOS-history of the Earth-Romulan Conflict, which would've happened sometime between the bulk of the ENT series and the "These Are the Voyages..." finale.

Has anyone ever filled in the blanks about what happened between Earth and the Romulans, and what part Archer/NX-01 Enterprise played in it?

 

[Dukhat]

I have never paid any attention to any ENT novels. I did watch the ENT TV series.

It looked like the show was slowly heading toward playing out the TOS-history of the Earth-Romulan Conflict, which would've happened sometime between the bulk of the ENT series and the "These Are the Voyages..." finale.

Has anyone ever filled in the blanks about what happened between Earth and the Romulans, and what part Archer/NX-01 Enterprise played in it?

Well, according to ENT, the Romulans started using remote-controlled ships piloted by blind white Andorians, and the NX-01 survived the war only to be decommissioned right before the founding of the Federation. There was also some movie that might have been produced showing the war, and would have had the NX-01 at Risa during the entire war. Incredibly stupid, yes, I know.

 

[F. King Daniel]

HERE is a detailed synopsis of that unmade Earth/Romulan war movie, Star Trek: The Beginning. I assume they originally planned it to be an Enterprise movie (I recall reading somewhere that TPTB wanted to save the war for the big screen), until ENT's cancellation.

I'd have preferred a novelization of that story (something Erik Jendresen one spoke about in interviews) to the novelverse Romulan war we got, which I really did not like.

 

[T'Girl]

If the Romulan War occurs before the events of TATV then we know that the the NX-01 isn't destroyed or damaged to the point of de-commission in the war and none of the featured officers are killed in it.

 

[Wingsley]

^ Agreed, but it would also be possible that Earth (and the Coalition allies) went into a massive ship-building spree and that NX-01 was either used as a command ship or that the "war" was so unconventional (use of mines, nukes and tricks) that it was really a proxy war.

Let's recall Spock's recitation to the NCC-1701 Enterprise's crew in "Balance of Terror":

Referring to the map on your screens, you will note beyond the moving position of our vessel, a line of Earth outpost stations. Constructed on asteroids, they monitor the Neutral Zone established by treaty after the Earth-Romulan conflict a century ago. As you may recall from your histories, this conflict was fought, by our standards today, with primitive atomic weapons and in primitive space vessels which allowed no quarter, no captives. Nor was there even ship-to-ship visual communication. Therefore, no human, Romulan, or ally has ever seen the other. Earth believes the Romulans to be warlike, cruel, treacherous, and only the Romulans know what they think of Earth. The treaty, set by sub-space radio, established this Neutral Zone, entry into which by either side, would constitute an act of war. The treaty has been unbroken since that time. Captain?

I like to think there was a substantial Allied fleet built to confront the Romulans, but that the bulk of that fleet fell into three categories:

1: small starships (much smaller than NX-01) and NX-Alpha-style fighters. ("First Flight")

2: robotic drones ("United")

3: ultra-crude, pre-fabbed "warship" starships, built for quick mass-production and reliable in combat, nowhere near as refined as NX-01.​

This combination would seem to fall in line with what Spock was talking about. Note that a proxy war / terror war would mean few direct starship-to-starship engagements like the kind we saw in TOS. This would add to a sense of retrograde backwardness in the conflict, even for ENT. [Also of note: #1 and #3 may be one and the same.]

I suggest this because it would make sense for the conflict to have redirected Earth's (and her allies') energies away from scientific exploration, technological advancement and the refining of starship design to focus on mass-production and an arm's race to deal with what they would see as a growing problem from the Romulans.

 

[T'Girl]

3: ultra-crude, pre-fabbed "warship" starships, built for quick mass-production and reliable in combat, nowhere near as refined as NX-01.

Or the ships built for the war were the next generation of design and rendered the NX-01 hopelessly obsolete.

The Enterprise survived because it spent the war transporting toilet paper (and the occasional Admiral's mistress) in the rear areas.

 

[Wingsley]

^ That wouldn't mesh with Spock's recounting of the conflict, though.

 

[Nerys Myk]

HERE is a detailed synopsis of that unmade Earth/Romulan war movie, Star Trek: The Beginning. I assume they originally planned it to be an Enterprise movie (I recall reading somewhere that TPTB wanted to save the war for the big screen), until ENT's cancellation.

I'd have preferred a novelization of that story (something Erik Jendresen one spoke about in interviews) to the novelverse Romulan war we got, which I really did not like.

Maybe it's the AICN style of "reporting", but that sounds awful.

 

[F. King Daniel]

It certainly would have been different, shown us a side of Trek we'd not seen before (the UESN and their space fighters) told a very different version of the Romulan War than we'd heard before, creatively reinterpreted some of Spock's "Balance of Terror" comments to fit into the ENT setting (like the use of atomic weapons being Chase's nuke stealing, or ENT Romulan drone ships to do all the orbital fighting) and shown us ancestors of Kirk and Spock in action.

It definitely needed some work, though. I don't buy Romulans attempting to cleanse the galaxy of Vulcans one world at a time, and the way the Romulans hid their BIG fleet makes no sense whatsoever. And those love letters between Chase and Penelope... yuk.

 

[Ro_Laren]

I wish we could have seen the Romulan Wars on Enterprise! The show was cancelled just when it started to get really interesting.

 

[T'Girl]

Or the ships built for the war were the next generation of design and rendered the NX-01 hopelessly obsolete.

That wouldn't mesh with Spock's recounting of the conflict, though.

I believe it would. When Spock referred to Earth space vessels being "primitive" it wasn't in comparison to the NX-01, but instead to mid-23rd century starships like the TOS Enterprise.

The majority of Humans ship that fought in the Romulan War could have been of a advanced design to the NX-01 and still have been in Spock's eyes primitive.

Spock: "... this conflict was fought by our standards today ... in primitive space vessels."

I wish we could have seen the Romulan Wars on Enterprise!

Yes. Would much rather have seen the war as one or two seasons of a series, than compacted into a two hour movie or even a six hour miniseries.

The show was cancelled just when it started to get really interesting.

With the exception of a few episodes, the last season was the weakest of the series.

 

[Edit_XYZ]

Since the subject seems to be up again:

http://www.trekbbs.com/showpost.php?p=9278563&postcount=29

 

[Gaith]

No disrespect to TOS, but I would have happily thrown out much of the limitations on such a war sketched out by "Balance of Terror". Apply some handwave to the effect of tech/info fallout from First Contact has changed history if you like - though I would also have voted to explicitly put ENT on a whole new timeline, JJ-style, from the very pilot on - but disregarding some comments from Spock in that one ep wouldn't bother me much if at all.

 

[Dukhat]

It certainly would have been different, shown us a side of Trek we'd not seen before (the UESN and their space fighters) told a very different version of the Romulan War than we'd heard before, creatively reinterpreted some of Spock's "Balance of Terror" comments to fit into the ENT setting (like the use of atomic weapons being Chase's nuke stealing, or ENT Romulan drone ships to do all the orbital fighting) and shown us ancestors of Kirk and Spock in action.

It definitely needed some work, though. I don't buy Romulans attempting to cleanse the galaxy of Vulcans one world at a time, and the way the Romulans hid their BIG fleet makes no sense whatsoever. And those love letters between Chase and Penelope... yuk.

It sounds more like the writers were trying to shoehorn in a scenario more in line with Spock's lines in "BOT," while at the same time almost trying to invalidate what was established in four years of ENT.

No disrespect to TOS, but I would have happily thrown out much of the limitations on such a war sketched out by "Balance of Terror". Apply some handwave to the effect of tech/info fallout from First Contact has changed history if you like - though I would also have voted to explicitly put ENT on a whole new timeline, JJ-style, from the very pilot on - but disregarding some comments from Spock in that one ep wouldn't bother me much if at all.

No, it wasn't entirely necessary to follow Spock's lines word for word when creating the new series, but it also would have been nice if the new show's production values didn't look straight out of Voyager either.

 

[Timo]

...So, what do you think of the odds of the Romulan War story being told "for good" in the future? In an aired, "canonical" Trek medium such as movies, television, or (if certain Trek predictions come true) new visual medium?

The story told in the novels would probably be an obstacle to the exact same story being told on screen, except in clever in-jokes of the sort that enrich DS9 and ENT with various "novelisms". General concepts could no doubt still be recycled without major monetary compensation to the novelists (a surefire way to kill a TV or movie project). Drone ships (ENT) and proxy forces (ST:NEM) would be the obvious elements available from post-"BoT" stories, and Romulans masquerading as Vulcans could of course still be used despite seeing some use in ENT and novels. So the big leap would be from could to should and would...

The cloaking issue still remains largely untouched in canon, as the introduction of 22nd century invisibility and camouflage technologies has only made the question fuzzier. TOS already dropped the ball with our heroes showing amazement at invisibility when several of their opponents had previously appeared out of thin air, to the very same practical effect. Should the new telling try to brush invisibility under the carpet; keep it fuzzy with references to chameleon fields and the like; or give it an ultimate twist in a story that makes it plausible for invisibility to be a common weapon of war in the 22nd century but unknown in the 23rd?

These technicalities out of the way, would there be either writer or audience interest (beyond the minimal contribution from the sort of fans that buy novels)?

Finally, what set of heroes would you prefer for the story? ENT? All-new? All-new or ENT with a framing story featuring heroes from some other spinoff? With a time travel story?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Wingsley]

...So, what do you think of the odds of the Romulan War story being told "for good" in the future? In an aired, "canonical" Trek medium such as movies, television, or (if certain Trek predictions come true) new visual medium?

The story told in the novels would probably be an obstacle to the exact same story being told on screen, except in clever in-jokes of the sort that enrich DS9 and ENT with various "novelisms". General concepts could no doubt still be recycled without major monetary compensation to the novelists (a surefire way to kill a TV or movie project). Drone ships (ENT) and proxy forces (ST:NEM) would be the obvious elements available from post-"BoT" stories, and Romulans masquerading as Vulcans could of course still be used despite seeing some use in ENT and novels. So the big leap would be from could to should and would...

The cloaking issue still remains largely untouched in canon, as the introduction of 22nd century invisibility and camouflage technologies has only made the question fuzzier. TOS already dropped the ball with our heroes showing amazement at invisibility when several of their opponents had previously appeared out of thin air, to the very same practical effect. Should the new telling try to brush invisibility under the carpet; keep it fuzzy with references to chameleon fields and the like; or give it an ultimate twist in a story that makes it plausible for invisibility to be a common weapon of war in the 22nd century but unknown in the 23rd?

These technicalities out of the way, would there be either writer or audience interest (beyond the minimal contribution from the sort of fans that buy novels)?

Finally, what set of heroes would you prefer for the story? ENT? All-new? All-new or ENT with a framing story featuring heroes from some other spinoff? With a time travel story?

Timo Saloniemi

At this point, there are always fan films as a possible means to tell the story.

As for the bit about TOS dropping the ball: I'm not sure what you're talking about here. There was some degree of stealth in that some attacking space vessels could sneak up on each other. But "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" took place in TOS' third year... well after "Balance of Terror". And Spock could track Bele's ship; they just couldn't see it. That's a major difference with the Romulan cloaking device, where all Spock could detect (if anything) was movement.

 

[Timo]

Yet the Thasian ship appeared next to the Enterprise unannounced in "Charlie X" already. "We didn't see them coming!" should be a phenomenon very familiar to our heroes at this point of their careers, this point of UFP history, and indeed this point of storytelling (as invisibility is an ages-old scifi trope, and it seems clumsy to insist that it be novel and shiny in Star Trek).

Timo Saloniemi

 

[lostshaker]

I wish we could have seen the Romulan Wars on Enterprise!

Yes. Would much rather have seen the war as one or two seasons of a series, than compacted into a two hour movie or even a six hour miniseries.

I would not have minded a cold war on Enterprise with a few skirmishes, but not the actual war, which could've been done with a movie trilogy. DS9 did the war. No need to do another war on a weekly series.

 

[lostshaker]

The existence of Section 31 in ENT renders Spock's description of the Earth-Romulan War questionable, as historical events could've been classified, and therefore deviation permissible.

 

[Red Omega]

The Romulan war books were fair. The whole "taking control of your ship" thing was a clever way of shoehorning the story into the facts stated in TOS. But those facts create major story telling issues for a more in-depth look at the war. And the way the books deal with the answer to Romulan hacking is pretty lame. "Let's just dumb down everything". Pretty lame.